A member of a traditional business family writes her second novel, about a dysfunctional family in the mithai business. Gita Piramal is no stranger to this milieu, and she explores its unique dynamics
A novel deserves to be read only if it helps us discover a facet of ourselves or reminds us of a universal truth.
In the airport action thriller genre, Jeffrey Archer’s latest book, A Prisoner of Birth, traces the journey of an underprivileged football-mad lad who overcomes his enemies. He gains the upper hand by investing in himself. He finds a fellow jailbird who teaches him to read. This kickstarts a programme of self-education.
The stupendous global success of J K Rowling’s Harry Potter series lies in the exploration of our deepest and most secret fears. Children and adults alike find comfort in reading that others too are prey to similar anxieties.
Before I come to the exploration within Aftertaste, Namita Devidayal’s second novel, let me tell you its outline. The novel opens in the mid-1970s and ends in 1984, the year Indira Gandhi was assassinated after the assault on the Golden Temple. In Bombay (as the city was then called), a Punjabi family of two parents and four children is struggling with bankruptcy. Mummyji steps in to save the day with her cooking. A mithai empire is born.
The father dies. Mummyji holds her family together with bribes of money, endless food and adoration. Her eldest son, Rajan Papa, is weak and ineffectual, and short of cash. Sunny, the dynamic head of the business, has an ugly marriage, with a hysterical wife and a demanding mistress. Suman, the spoilt beauty of the family who whiles her time away giving religious discourses and leading prayer meetings, is hypocritically determined to get her hands on Mummyji’s pair of seven-carat diamond ear studs. Saroj is the unlucky sister, dark where Suman is fair, and unable to stand up for herself. Each one of them wants Mummyji to die.
The book is in two parts. The chapters in the first section describe the adult lives and childhoods of Mummyji’s four children in Cozy Villa. All are brought up in the same way but none experiences the upbringing in the same way. Every family event scars each child-adult in a different way.
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The second half of Aftertaste takes us to the hospital where Mummyji lies dying. I will stop the outline here as I don’t want to give away the ending. But what I will say is that the Sindhi and Punjabi community is abuzz, discussing the identity of the personalities in Devidayal’s book. It’s a follow-up act to Shobhaa De who in 1989 set the Bombay chatterati on fire with Socialite Evenings and the Bollywood glitterati on edge with Starry Nights. Perhaps that’s why in her back-of-the-book endorsement De cheekily puns, “Aftertaste is delicious — I love it!”
So what insight can readers of the Business Standard obtain from reading about the mithai empire and the business family that runs it? Perhaps only those readers who have children may recognise the eternal dilemma that Namita Devidayal, herself born into a business family, highlights: what binds a child to a parent?
Money, screams our financial press. What more is there to think about, especially in a business family? Have not newspaper tycoons made millions printing stories about the Ambanis? Have not thousands of reporters earned four-digit bonuses for uncovering the underbellies of India’s Top 100? Don’t we all read vicariously about the family problems of the rich and famous, comforted that they suffer the same issues as lesser mortals?
Perhaps that’s the wrong lens to use when reading Aftertaste. Each one of us, from a business family or not, will recognise in the Todarmal family someone we know. You may be a professional manager, vice-president of a leading FMCG or general manager in a PSU bank, yet you will undoubtedly see the face of someone you know in Rajan Papa, Sunny, Suman or Saroj.
This neatly brings us to the insight which we parents individually have to discover for ourselves. Where there is money, it can — and frequently does — bind children to parents. But so does duty. And love. Love is noble, but which of the other two is more ignoble?
To ask this question in a country like India is virtually a heresy. Our ancient culture and religion is steeped in respect for age and especially parents (who wrote the scriptures anyway).
Duty (karma in this context) is sacred. Yet life has to be fun also. Today’s movies and television channels are all about young people having fun. Indian society is changing rapidly and the 1980s society Devidayal describes is imploding.
So for those of us who have sent our children abroad to study, who have given them the freedom to choose their partners, who foster their ability to earn and stand on their own two feet, who have taught them to think for themselves, who not only don’t frown on fun but like to share fun with them, can we really expect duty to bind our children to us?
Duty can be, and is, engrained in us by our parents. It is not a habit that children can easily shrug off. The two generations tacitly sign an invisible contract: parents will nurture the child in the early years, and the child will nurture the parents in their old age.
But duty is an expectation set by parents. Money is an expectation set by the child. It’s a subtle but crucial nuance. That’s the eternal dilemma described by Namita Devidayal, the insight that makes this book worth reading.
Having said that, my personal aftertaste is of dissatisfaction. The writing style Devidayal has chosen reminds me of Laura Esquivel’s Like Water For Chocolate, another story of a dominating mother and her children. Both authors deliver the story through commentary. The technique is particularly suited to movie and television scripts yet can deliver brilliant results in novels also. In Aftertaste, however, the style leaves the characters somewhat shallow — we can’t get into and under their skins. Characters are left as caricatures.
Sex similarly gets the caricature treatment. When undertaken by husbands and wives, it is tossed off in tiny, mundane, half-liners. Even in the case of unlucky Saroj who pines for her estranged husband, the primal act is a banal triviality. Simultaneously, and often most confusingly, the word ‘whore’ is lavishly sprinkled like pistachio shavings on the delectable halwas and kachoris lovingly sketched in Aftertaste. Conversely, various forms of burps and farts are glorious in their description.
I also wish there were fewer clichés. Colloquialism is a powerful writing tool but the storyline demands more. On the other hand, the lighter style will probably make the book more accessible to younger readers. Buy a Bournvita Barfi, curl up on a sofa, and enjoy!
Dr Gita Piramal is a business historian and author, and chairman of Ergo, a manufacturer of office furniture
AFTERTASTE
Author: Namita Devidayal
Publisher: Random House
Pages: 304
Price: Rs 399